The pair married after meeting atop the Eiffel Tower. Dr. Dan Giedeman spent much of his first trip to Paris in a conference hall.
Dan, then 27, was studying economics at Washington College in St. Louis, Missouri, in September 1998. Dan leaped at the chance to attend a meeting in Paris, hosted by his professor.
“I grew up in the Midwest of the USA. So I never got the chance to travel to Europe or anywhere else “Dan tells CNN Journey now. “I used to love going.”
Dan slept in his last day in Paris. He’d gone out for drinks with other conference goers the night before. He realised he’d scarcely visited the town in the 24 hours before his trip back to America.
“I can’t leave Paris without visiting the Eiffel Tower,” Dan mused. He pulled himself out of his resort room, tie and shirt in hand, and went for the 7th arrondissement.
Dan saw a female who met his gaze while waiting for the Eiffel Tower’s topmost elevator. They both grinned.
Esther Wieland, a 23-year-old preschool trainer from Zurich, came to visit.
“I used to live alone, and I thought a Monday morning would be less congested,” Esther tells CNN Travel. “So I went touring alone and saw him.”
“We were kind of flowing backwards and forwards past one another,” Dan recalls.
When an American family talked to Esther, they lost sight of each other.
But as the elevator got at the top of the tower, tourists spilled out to see the city below, Dan and Esther saw one other again.
They went around the observation platform, soaking in the panoramic vistas of Paris and occasionally catching one other’s eye.
“I should talk to her,” Dan mused.
But would he attempt French? So what? But what if it was awkward?
“If I don’t get along with her, I’m on my own. No one on earth needs to know “he chose.
With this in mind, Dan approached Esther and asked, in broken French, whether she would picture him with the vista.
No one understood what Dan was saying because he only had one year of French in school.
“I couldn’t understand his French,” Esther recalls now. “So I said, ‘Can you repeat yourself?'”
Embarrassed, Dan resorted to his original dialect. Esther said she spoke English well.
“Dan seemed a little hesitant when he spoke to me, which suited me,” Esther recalls. “I liked his eyes.”
After she took the photo, they walked together across the observation platform.
“We walked across the top of the tower desiring the views,” Dan adds.
They walked and spoke for perhaps 30 minutes, observing the village below. Dan then asked Esther if she wanted a coffee at the Eiffel Tower cafe.
A bottom eater, Esther advised them.
“I suggested lunch instead, partially because it was lunchtime and partly because I thought it would give us more time to talk,” Esther recalls.
“We both had no plans for the rest of the day, so this was sort of like a voyage. It was a lovely day, so I suggested we dine outside.”
“Maybe it was love at first sight. But there was that potential of love at first sight “Dan remarks
8 hours in Paris
Dan captured Esther after lunch in the Jardin de Luxembourg.
Dan & Esther Giedeman
On the Place de l’Alma, Dan and Esther found a pavement desk at a nearby café.
“Our workplace had a nice view of the Eiffel Tower,” Dan recalls.
The two resumed their conversation over a croque monsieur and caprese salad, first with sparkling water, then espressos.
Esther said she was in town to see her aunt and uncle who lived outside of Paris. Dan told Esther about his studies and his four siblings in St Louis. Esther talked about being an only child and working as an au pair in London.
“I used to be nervous,” Dan admits. “However, I used to be simply enjoying the day.”
(Esther) “I felt snug.” “It just seemed like we knew each other, not like it was the first time.”
After lunch, the two went to the Jardin de Luxembourg. Dan captured Esther by the Luxembourg Palace.
They also asked a bystander to take their photo together. Darlings Dan and Esther in blue shirts and ties.
Dan and Esther went for a walk after lunch at the Jardin de Luxembourg. They asked a bystander to take their picture.
Dan & Esther Giedeman
They walked by the massive Medici fountain, past sunbathers enjoying the late summer heat, past flower rows enjoying a final bloom. Dan then asked Esther if she wanted to move.
“Will you write me again if I write?” Esther inquired.
“That was the first indicator that she wasn’t just pitying this poor foreigner roaming across Europe alone,” Dan laughs.
Dan escorted Esther to the Gare Saint-Lazare that night since she had a practise at her aunt’s. They scrawled their addresses and phone numbers on scrap paper on the platform.
It was the last time we saw each other, says Esther.
“I gave her a hand kiss,” Dan says.
Dan also grabbed a photo of Esther as she boarded the carriage.
“We checked out since the practise ended,” he recalls.
Then he was bored.
“It was kind of a sad sensation since I had such a great day, but we knew it was the end,” he recalls now.
Dan stopped in a merchant to look at postcards on his way back to his lodge. He picked one with an Eiffel Tower shot on the front.
“I promise I’ll think of you every time I see an image of the Eiffel Tower,” Dan wrote to Esther, who promptly uploaded it.
Then he called one of his sisters from a payphone, telling her about meeting Esther and their wonderful afternoon.
Esther sat on the practise, distracted by Dan.
“I remember being uncomfortable, leaving the session, and saying goodbye,” she recalls.
“There was no guarantee we’d ever see each other again; it was just that if I wrote to you, we’d write again,” Dan adds.
Postcards
Dan and Esther began writing soon after their Paris meeting.
Dan & Esther Giedeman
Esther looked at the US map on her aunt and uncle’s wall again. She was seeking for Dan’s hometown, St. Louis.
She then wrote about her Eiffel Tower incident in her notebook. Esther has been jotting down her crushes since she was a child.
“I always used a code identify,” Esther explains. “And it was always Dan. And that was so funny, I got the real Dan.”
Two days later, Esther sent Dan an Eiffel Tower postcard, unaware he’d sent her a duplicate.
Those first playing cards sparked an epistolary connection.
“It took 10-14 days from mailing a card to obtaining a reply. So when a card arrived, it was like Christmas and a surprise “Dan recalls.
Dan called Esther for the first time after two months of letter writing.
“This was before cheap international phone calls,” Dan explains. “And I just gave her my name, expecting us to talk for a few minutes, but we ended up talking for an hour. So that was the most expensive first date I’ve ever had.”
This became a habit. Every Sunday afternoon and evening, Dan and Esther would talk on the phone. They’d write letters all week.
After months of correspondence, Dan agreed to visit Esther in Zurich, Switzerland.
So he flew out 9 months after the Eiffel Tower was built.
“There wasn’t evident whether or not it was a love connection until I travelled to Zurich to visit her,” Dan recalls.
Dan and Esther were both delighted to meet each other, but neither knew what to expect.
“We were buds,” Esther explains. “We both hoped for feelings, but we didn’t express them. We simply got to know one other as individuals.”
“It was like a fortuitous friendship. But I think we’ve all been careful since we don’t know what the other person is considering “Dan says
Reunion in Switzerland
Esther waited nervously at Zurich Airport for Dan. But as soon as she recognised him, the September advantage reappeared.
“It seemed like we were back in Paris,” Esther explains. “The second time I saw him, I remember thinking, ‘How is it that I know so much about this person, how they assume, who they are?’ The chemistry came together.”
Esther brought Dan to view the Rhine Falls the first day. Then they headed to Lucerne, a historic metropolis.
Dan had gone to Paris in September 1998 at the suggestion of one of his instructors, Dr. Douglass North.
North had been intrigued by Dan and Esther’s potential meeting atop the Eiffel Tower.
North was in Zurich at the same time as Dan, giving a talk about the college. He persuaded Dan to meet up.
So after a day in Lucerne, Dan and Esther travelled back to Zurich to meet the professor and his wife at the upscale Kronenhalle restaurant.
“Our very first true date was a double date with this Nobel Laureate and his husband, who were both in their 80s,” recounts Dan. “It was my second day there, and we still didn’t know if there was a romance.”
Esther recalls being nervous.
“I wasn’t a great driver. So I ran into a pillar, damaged the car, got a speeding penalty, and then we had to meet this important professor at a restaurant “”
The fanciest restaurant I’ve ever been at, Fairly Lady, made me feel like I didn’t know anything.
But the Norths were friendly and it was a fun night. Dan and Esther kissed for the first time after saying farewell to the professor and his wife.
The two spent the rest of the week touring Switzerland, including Bern and Milan, and seeing Esther’s family.
jigsaw
Dan returned to the US and told his family about his trip, saying that he and Esther would try to make a long-distance relationship work.
“After all, you had to leave the country to meet someone since no one in America liked you,” one of Dan’s brothers quipped.
He was joking, but several people in Dan’s life had been apprehensive. His mother was worried, and several friends said it wouldn’t last.
Later that summer, Esther travelled to America to spend 3 weeks with Dan. She rapidly bonded with his family, resolving any conflicts.
“I think they hoped things would work out between us as soon as they met her,” Dan adds.
Esther’s mother was cautious when she returned from Paris, having fallen for men she met on vacation as a child, but the flame had never died.
With time, Esther’s mother realised her daughter’s bond with Dan was deeper.
“She knew I was more worried, that I was really hoping and struggling and investing,” Esther explains. “I believe she knew then.”
A photograph of the Eiffel Tower will always remind me of you.
Dan’s first letter to Esther
Esther and Dan maintained their romance with letters, phone conversations, and a six-monthly meet-up in Europe or the US.
Their longest telephone name lasted eight hours.
“I recall writing daily letters at one point. On a daily level, I didn’t care. I probably typed the same thing over and over “Esther recalls.
Every visit ended with a tearful farewell. But they always parted happy.
“Every time, I felt our bond had built up far more than we imagined it would,” Dan says.
“We just took things slowly,” Esther explains. In the end, it was like a puzzle — each time we got a piece, it fit.
Next steps
Dan and Esther got engaged in Venice.
Dan & Esther Giedeman
Three years passed. Dan finished his PhD in the early 2000s. He aspired to secure a job as a professor but was unsure where he would land.
This unknown became a possibility as he and Esther planned their next actions.
“We could all move somewhere new together,” Dan recalls. “It wasn’t like one person would select — ‘I have to leave all the pieces I know to go over there’ or ‘You will leave all the parts you know to go over here’.”
Grand Valley State College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has an employment supply. Dan soon proposed to Esther in Venice, Italy.
Their wedding took place in a modest church in Buch am Irchel, overlooking the Rhine Valley. A Swiss vineyard celebration.
“We had food and drinks, and Esther’s buddies planned various games and activities for us,” Dan adds.
Esther accepted Dan’s name and became Esther Giedeman.
Family and friends from both countries were present for their wedding. Dan’s best man quipped that the pair had met in Paris, engaged in Venice, married in Zurich, and now were moving to Michigan.
“Grand Rapids is hardly Paris or Venice,” Dan concedes.
Dan and Esther were happy to finally be in the same spot after years of letter-writing and international phone talks. Grand Rapids became their home, and they now remain there with three kids.
Dan is still an economist and Esther is an artist.
Back to Paris
Dan and Esther on their return trip to the Eiffel Tower.
Dan & Esther Giedeman
Dan and Esther have frequented Switzerland during their 20 year marriage. They resided in Germany when Dan was on break from college. Their kids grew up with an American and Swiss ancestry.
Despite repeated trips to Europe, Dan and Esther didn’t return to Paris together until 2016.
This return to Paris may have been long overdue, but it was all the more painful.
Soon after, Dan and Esther visited the Jardin du Luxembourg.
Dan & Esther Giedeman
“We travelled for a week and slept in an Airbnb around town with our three sons and it was great,” Esther adds.
The couple returned to the Eiffel Tower’s top and went around the Jardin du Luxembourg, this time with their boys, the family posing for photos where Esther and Dan had visited in the late 1990s.
As they walked around Paris, Esther and Dan reflected about their first chance meeting.
The couple stood atop the Eiffel Tower with their three boys.
Dan & Esther Giedeman
Dan recalls his late professor, Douglass North, as Dan and Esther’s “fairy godfather.”
Dan would not have been in Paris had he not been recommended for the convention. But that was only one of several coincidences that led Dan and Esther to be atop the Eiffel Tower at the same moment.
“We wouldn’t have been in that line walking back and forth, just exchanging glances,” Dan adds.
Dan and Esther saved all their letters to one another.
Dan & Esther Giedeman
That September morning, neither Dan nor Esther expected to meet a life partner.
“You don’t go to an economics convention looking for romance,” Dan explains.
Their happy accident experience made them realise the value of being open to unexpected opportunities in life.
“Give daily the chance to be the best of your life,” was printed on Dan and Esther’s wedding invitations.
Their letters, together with the first postcards from Paris, are all stored in an Eiffel Tower-emblazoned hat box.
“I’m sure I’ll think of you every time I see an image of the Eiffel Tower,” Dan wrote to Esther on his first postcard.
“It turned out to be true,” he says now.
